“In what way?”

“I’d hear Sadia complaining to our mother. She said Fawad was so controlling. She couldn’t even go out for lunch with her girlfriends without him badgering her. And the thing that most broke her heart was her studies.”

“Ammi always said she stopped because I was born.”

“There had been the agreement. Even if she married, she could keep studying. She had no lack of help! But Fawad began to pressure her. He didn’t like her out by herself or with her friends from university. He hated that she’d joined the drama club, the debate club. He didn’t think the house was being run properly.”

“Did he hurt her?”

“No. He is not like that. But he is intimidating. He is the sort of person who corners you in a room, and if he sets on an idea, he won’t let up. He makes you think as he does.”

“I can’t imagine Ammi putting up with that!”

“That’s exactly it. That’s why he chose her. He liked her spark. Her determination. He used to laugh and say they were a pair from Taming of the Shrew, only there was no taming her! He said of all the girls he knew, Sadia was an original. Until…” He hesitates.

“Until what?”

“Until Naved.”

Up to this point I’ve been poised on the cushions, straining to take in every word that Uncle lays before me, hoping to hear more about Abu. But I sit back. It’s as if faint smudges were becoming clearer. Ammi’s obsessions with houses and real estate. Let’s live in that place where there’s no one, let’s go. The way she breathed down my neck around my studies, my clubs. I sometimes felt it was as if she was trying to restore a place that already existed in her mind. As if she wanted me to grasp that she hadn’t always slept on a foldaway couch, that she’d led a better, more exalted life.

“The thing of it is,” Uncle continues, “my sister was very dramatic about it all. She flaunted her connection to Naved. Said she felt she’d met her true match. Her destiny. They were soul and body, a higher love.”

I think of the ghazals Ammi loved to hum.

Piyaa baaj pyaala piyaa jaaye naa

Piyaa baaj jek til jiyaa jaaye naa

I can’t ever drink my drink without my love

I can’t ever breathe; I sink without my love

Be careful, she would tell me. Always wait for the true one.

“It was a mess,” he continues.

“You’re blaming my mother?”

“No, no, sweetie. But emotions ran high. Our father was angry. You can imagine the shame for our family. To have your daughter run away like that. To a penniless student! A journalist! With a small baby!”

I start. “Baby?”